America’s Soda Consumption Is Low and Dropping

If you are having a hard time keeping up with healthy-food trends, you are not alone. Big beverage companies are struggling with a serious decline in demand for soda. For the 11th consecutive year, carbonated soft drink sales dropped—this time by 1.2 percent.

America’s annual per-capita consumption of carbonated soft drinks dipped to about 650 eight-ounce servings, which is the lowest since 1985. (Although, honestly, that still sounds like a lot of soda to us.)

According to Fortune, “The industry has found itself out of favor as consumers seek beverage alternatives to soda that they deem healthier, notably juices and flavored waters.” These healthier drinks are not only lower in calories, but also do not contain the artificial sweetener aspartame, the author notes.

That’s bad news for diet sodas, which have fallen even further. Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi both declined by 5 percent in 2015.

Big Beverage’s latest tactic to get people back on the soda train? Real sugar. We’re not exactly sold on that scheme (since there’s plenty of evidence that sugar isn’t any better for health than high-fructose corn syrup), but maybe getting back to basics is exactly what the industry needs. Vintage is in—right?